The Buddhacarita
Themes
- everything is subject to decay
- it is necessary to find one’s own salvation
The Bodhisattva and the Hungry Tigress
- The Buddha, in the form of prince Mahasattva, sacrifices his life to
feed a hungry tigress. He says “For a long time I have served this putrid
body and given it beds and clothes, food and drink, and conveyances of all
kinds. Yet it is doomed to perish and fall down, and in the end it will break
up and be destroyed. How much better to leave this ungrateful body of
one’s own accord in good time!”
The Legend of the Buddha Shakyamuni
Canto 1: The Birth of the Bodhisattva
- The Buddha is born out of his mother’s side and immediately walks
seven steps. He says “For enlightenment I was born, for the good of all that
lives. This is the last time that I have been born into this world of becoming.”
His parents are King Shuddhodana, a king of the Shakyas, and
Queen Maya, also called the Great Maya, “from her resemblance to Maya
the Goddess.”
Canto 2: Asita’s Visit
- The seer Asita comes to see the baby Bodhisattva. “In wonderment he
looked upon the wondrous royal babe, and noticed that the soles of his feet
were marked with wheels, that his fingers and toes were joined by webs, that
a circle of soft down grew between his eyebrows, and that his testicles
were withdrawn like those of an elephant.” Asita is sad that he will not
live long enough to hear the Buddha’s teachings.
Canto 3: The Bodhisattva’s Youth and Marriage
- Queen Maya dies and her sister raises the Bodhisattva. He marries
Yashodhara. The king tries to ensure that the prince does not see
anything that bothers him, so he lives in the upper levels of the palace with
many female attendants. Eventually Yashodhara has a son, Rahula. “It must be
remembered that all the Bodhisattvas, those beings of quite
incomparable spirit, must first of all know the taste of the pleasures which the
senses can give. Only then, after a son has been born to them, do they depart
to the forest. Through the accumulated effects of his past deeds the
Bodhisattva possessed in himself the root cause of enlightenment, but
he could reach it only after first enjoying the pleasures of the senses.”
Canto 4: The Awakening
- The prince decides to go on an outing, so the king has the road
cleared of everyone that is sick, old, etc. The “Gods of the Pure Abode” create
an image of an old man, and the prince’s charioteer explains old age to
him. He goes out a second time, and he sees a “man with a diseased body.” The
third time he sees a corpse.
Canto 5: Withdrawal from the Women
- The prince stops taking pleasure in his female attendants. The king’s
counselor ,Udayin, reproaches him, and the prince tells him “It is not
that I despise the objects of sense, and I know full well that they make up
what we call the ‘world’. But when I consider the impermanence of everything
in this world, then I can find no delight in it.”
Canto 6: The Flight
- The prince decides to take a trip to the forest. He sees the fields
that have just been ploughed, and all the grass and insects that were killed
and injured by this, and “in the supreme nobility of his mind he performed
an act of supreme pity.” He leaves his friends and goes over to a
rose-apple tree. “There he sat down, reflected on the origination and passing away
of all that lives, and then he worked on his mind in such a way that, with
this theme as a basis, it became stable and concentrated. When he had won
through to mental stability, he was suddenly freed from all desire for
sense-objects and from cares of any kind.”
Canto 7: The Apparition of a Mendicant
- A religious mendicant appears to the prince that no one else can see.
The prince decides to take up this kind of life. That night, he has the
groom Chandaka bring his horse Kanthaka, “For I want to depart from here
to-day, and win the deathless state!”
Canto 8: The Dismissal of Chandaka
- Chandaka does not want to leave the prince, but the prince tells him
to go, and to tell the king why he has left. He says “All those whom birth
estranged from the oneness of Dharma must one day go their separate
ways ... Just think of my mother, who bore me in her womb with great longing and
with many pains. Fruitless proves her labour now.” He resolves to
“extinguish old age and death.”
Canto 9: The Practice of Austerities
- The Bodhisattva goes and lives by the river Nairañjana with five
mendicants and performs many austerities. “At mealtimes he was content
with a single jujube fruit, a single sesamum seed, and a single grain of
rice.” Eventually he realizes that this isn’t working, and he needs to take
care of his body before he can find enlightenment.
Canto 10: Nandabala’s Gift
- The daughter of the overseer of the cowherds, Nanadabala, gives the
Bodhisattva some milk-rice. The mendicants leave him. He sits under a
sacred fig-tree and decides to attain enlightenment. The serpent Kala says
“Your steps, O Sage, resound like thunder reverberating in the earth; the
light that issues from your body shines like the sun: No doubt that you
to-day will taste the fruit you so desire!”
Canto 11: The Defeat of Mara
- Mara is the God of Love, the one who “rules events connected with a
life of passion.” He tries to break the Bodhisattva’s resolve, but cannot,
and is defeated.
Canto 12: The Enlightenment
- The Bodhisattva puts himself into a trance. In the first watch of the
night, he recalls all of his previous births. He feels pity toward all
living beings, and reflects that “this world of Samsara is as
unsubstantial as the pith of a plantain tree.” In the second watch of the night, he
acquires the “supreme heavenly eye.” He looks at the world, and sees
that death and rebirth is influenced by one’s deeds. He decides that
Samsaric existence offers no security. In the third watch of the night, he
examines the “real and essential nature of this world.” He reflects on how
living beings constantly die and are reborn. “He then surveyed the twelve
links of conditioned co-production ... and saw that, beginning with ignorance,
they lead to old age and death, and, beginning with the cessation of
ignorance, they lead to the cessation of birth, old age, death, and all kinds of
ill.” In the fourth watch of the night, at dawn, he reaches the state of
all-knowledge. Everyone in the world, except for Mara, is happy. He
stays there for seven days. Brahma and Indra ask him to help other people
attain freedom.
Canto 13: The Meeting with the Mendicant
- The Buddha meets a mendicant. The mendicant asks who his teacher is,
and the Buddha tells him “No teacher have I. None need I venerate, and none
must I despise.” The Buddha says that he is on his way to Varanasi to try to
help people.
Canto 14: The Meeting with the Five Mendicants
- He meets the five mendicants that he spent time with before. They
don’t mean to treat him with respect, but the can’t help it. They don’t
understand that he is the Buddha.
Canto 15: Turning the Wheel of Dharma
- The Buddha explains to the mendicants that they cannot achieve
enlightenment though austerities. “Those foolish people who torment
themselves, as well as those who have become attached to the domains of
the senses, both these should be viewed as faulty in their method, because
they are not on the way to deathlessness. These so-called austerities but
confuse the mind which is overpowered by the body’s exhaustion.”
Canto 16: The Meeting of Father and Son
- The Buddha goes to see his father, and his father is happy that he
has become the Buddha.
Canto 17: Further Conversions
- The Buddha goes to heaven and preaches to his mother and the gods. He
then returns to the earth to convert more people.
Canto 18: Devadatta
- The Buddha’s cousin, Devadatta, is “offended in his pride,” and tries
to
kill the Buddha a couple of times, and to undermine his authority.
Canto 19: The Desire for Death
- Several years later, the Buddha gives up his claim to live to the end
of the aeon. He tells Mara that he will “enter the final Nirvana”
in three months. Ananda is sad that the Buddha will die.
Canto 20: The Leave-Taking from Vaisali, the Final Couch, Instructions
to the Mallas
- The Buddha lies down on a couch that Ananda prepares. The Mallas come
and pay homage to him. Everyone is sad that their teacher is leaving. The
Buddha tells them “It is indeed a fact that salvation cannot come from the
mere sight of Me ... But if someone has thoroughly understood this my
Dharma, then he is released from the net of suffering, even though he never
cast his eyes on Me.”
Canto 21: Parinirvana
- The Buddha enters Nirvana. His last advice is that “Everything,
whether stationary or movable, is bound to perish in the end.” Mara and his
followers are happy that the Buddha has left the world.
Canto 22: The Relics
- “Those who had not yet got rid of their passions shed tears. Most of
the monks lost their composure and felt grief. Those only who had completed
the cycle were not shaken out of their composure, for they knew well that
it is the nature of things to pass away.” The Buddha is cremated, but his
bones do not burn. The seven neighbouring kings ask for some of the relics. At
first the Mallas do not want to give them any, but eventually they do. The
kings erect Stupas for the relics in their capital cities.
Canto 23: The Scriptures
- The five hundred Arhats collect the Buddha’s sayings. Ananda recites
all of the Buddhas sermons for them.
Important Names and Terms
• Buddha: the Awakened One, someone who has woken up from the
illusion/dream of this material world.
• Asoka: ~268 BCE, an Indian emperor who promoted Buddhism. He erected
stone poles with inscriptions, which are used now as sources for dating stuff.
• Jataka stories: stories about previous births of the Buddha. There
are about 550 of them. Usually the Buddha is talking with some of his
disciples and a question makes him recall one of his past lives, and he tells the
story, identifying the people in the stories as previous births of people in
his entourage.
• Bodhisattva: a being bent on awakening.
• gatha: the moral point of a Jataka story, usually one of the six
perfections, particularly generosity.
• Rahula: the Buddha’s son, his name means “a fetter.”
• the three jewels: Buddha (teacher), dharma (teaching), sangha (the
community of followers)
• Tathagata: “the thus gone one,” an epithet for the Buddha. It refers
to him in his last birth before that of prince Siddhartha. His name in
this birth is prince Vessantara.